How Many Times Has The South Side Parade Been On St. Paddy's Day?

CHICAGO — As many of us know in this neighborhood, it's more appropriate to say that St. Patrick's Day falls on the South Side Irish Parade Day this year rather than the other way around. The event simply known year-round in Beverly-Morgan Park as "The Parade" has become larger than the holiday itself.

But with the parade occurring on the actual March 17 holiday this year, it begs the question: How many times has South Side Irish Parade Day and St. Patrick's Day been one in the same?

So I asked parade co-founder Marianne Coakley for help finding the answer.

It turns out this Sunday will be the sixth time the parade will occur on St. Paddy's Day.

The first, Coakley says, is the very first one back in 1979. That's when members of the Coakley and Hendry families joined other "Wee Folk" on Washtenaw and Talman near 109th Street and marched around the block in what was then just designed as a fun way to suggest the city "Bring Back St. Pat's" to the South Side.

RELATED - Wee Folks To Western: A History Of The South Side Irish Parade

That historic event in 1979 was held on a Saturday, Coakley said.

As we all know, ever since the parade has occurred on the Sunday before St. Patrick's Day. Unless the holiday itself falls on a Sunday.

Coakley then confirmed through the parade posters she keeps in her West Beverly home that the parade did indeed occur on all other St. Patrick's Day Sundays for the next 30 years.

Those years in which St. Patrick's Day was a Sunday were 1985, 1991, 1996 and 2002. The 1985 date is a significant one in my own life. That's the day I was brought home from the hospital as a 4-day-old baby. Of course, my parents made sure to bring me by the parade before we even got home.

Parade Day would have also occurred on St. Patrick's Day in 2013, but the committee decided then that March 10 would be the date of the parade that year.

"The committee wanted to be cautious with the new security plan they were working with," Coakley said.

2013 was just the second year of the parade since it returned from a two-year hiatus.

Which means this year's march down Western will be the first on March 17 since it has returned, and the first South Side Irish Parade to be held on the St. Patrick's Day holiday since 2002.